


the blanket fort

by Emily_Nicaoidh



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alpha Victor Nikiforov, Alpha Yuri Plisetsky, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Nesting, Omega Katsuki Yuuri, Sleepy Cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 04:39:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13967511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emily_Nicaoidh/pseuds/Emily_Nicaoidh
Summary: Yuuri's first heat since moving in with Viktor in St. Petersburg is going to happen soon. He's worried about how he will be able to build a satisfying next in Viktor's apartment, so he tries to ignore it and focus on training instead.





	the blanket fort

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fic for Heartbeats Zine, a charity zine project in the YOI fandom. The zine was organized into sections around the five love languages. I wanted to explore the softer side of omegaverse relationships, so I wrote this fic about blanket forts and cuddles, so I wrote about the "acts of devotion" love language.

"Oi, Katsudon! Why are you still here? Go home! Viktor left hours ago." Yurio's voice echoed across the rink, and Yuuri looked over at him guiltily. Yakov, Mila, and Georgi had all left hours ago, shortly after Viktor had, and for some reason that was unclear to Yuuri, Yurio had announced he was staying late to practice too.

 

"I want to get this jump right before I quit for the day," he said. It wasn't entirely a lie.

 

"You've done it perfectly five times in a row, what else are you waiting for?" Yurio asked, his tone softening. "I don't think you have anything to worry about."

 

_ That's where you're wrong _ , Yuuri thought. He did have something to worry about, but it wasn't the jumps. With the move to St. Petersburg and the pressure of getting ready for Japanese Nationals while Viktor prepared for the Russian Nationals, and the red-eye flights back and forth since their competitions were only days apart, Yuuri's stressed, exhausted body had skipped his last two heats. 

 

The next one was only days away, and he could already feel the prickliness behind his eyes, the itchiness under his skin, and the general sense of irritation and wrongness that came with heats. Some omegas enjoyed them, Yuuri knew. In college, Phichit had always cheerfully locked himself in his room with a box of toys and emerged a few days later looking slightly dazed and malnourished but pleased and sated. 

 

Yuuri wasn't one of those. At first he had thought it might be different with a partner, but being with Viktor didn't really change how he felt. His heats were shorter, now, but more intense, and the usual every-other-month schedule was continually being disrupted because of their intense practice schedule. There were some theories about the minimum amount of body fat that omegas had to maintain in order to have heats; Yuuri wasn't sure if he could pin a precise number on it, but he knew that he did tend to have them more regularly in the off-season, when he was less strict about his diet. 

 

If anything, he had been grateful that he hadn't had any heats since moving to St. Petersburg. He had a routine, at home, and Yuuri didn't know where he could get any of his usual comfort foods in Russia or if stores here even sold the specific Japanese brand of sports drink that he practically lived off of during them, and most of all he didn't know how he could possibly make a good enough nest in an apartment where, in spite of Viktor's best intentions, Yuuri still felt like a guest. 

 

Viktor had, in usual Viktor Nikiforov style, gone to impressive lengths to make Yuuri feel at home in his apartment. He had ordered a Japanese tea set and rice cooker on Hiroko's recommendation. He had bought large stainless steel chopsticks for cooking, and had found an Asian market in town that actually carried nori that wasn’t so old and stale it tasted like flaky green cardboard. He had bought the same brand of towels for Yuuri that Yu-Topia had. He had packed his carryon with all Yuuri's favourite varieties of tea, in case they were hard to find in Russia. 

 

And Yuuri appreciated all of it, he really did. He knew it couldn't be easy for Viktor to suddenly have a roommate after over a decade of living alone. But the books on the shelves were all in Cyrillic, the buttons on the tv remote just as indecipherable, and the subtitles on the shows, when there were any at all, were in Finnish or German. 

 

And then there was the bed. 

 

Yuuri loved Viktor's bed, he really did. It was enormous, with room for both of them and Makkachin and room to spare. Viktor had heaps of pillows of all different levels of firmness and size, and a carved wooden chest, painted with red and white flower patterns, full of extra quilts and blankets at the foot of his bed. It was a magnificent bed. 

 

But it wasn't Yuuri's bed, and it wasn't Yuuri's bedroom. Even his dorm room in Detroit had felt more 'his'; by the time he graduated, Yuuri and Phichit had lived in that suite together for five years. As impermanent as it was, it had been home for them.

 

So here Yuuri was, landing his seventh quad flip of the afternoon on aching and bloodied feet, because he couldn't face going back to Viktor's apartment and failing to build a satisfying nest. 

 

He'd spent one heat with Viktor, back at the onsen, right after the Rostelecom cup. The timing had been nothing short of miraculous--Yuuri had felt it coming on him as the plane took off, and it had hit hard and fast. By the time they were back at the onsen Yuuri had been feverish and needy, and he had practically dragged Viktor into his bedroom and assembled a haphazard and unsatisfying nest out of his sheets and blankets. Afterwards, Yuuri was irritable as usual, but after explaining patiently to Viktor that no, he hadn't done anything wrong, he just got like this, I don't know Viktor, blame it on hormones or something, the two of them had gotten back to work training for the Final. Yuuri had done his best to put yet another unpleasant and unsatisfying heat out of his mind so that he could focus on getting ready for the Final.

 

"Go home, idiot!" Yurio yelled, injecting a hint of alpha aggression into the command, and finally Yuuri gave in. 

 

"You just want the rink to yourself," he grumbled, but he skated to the boards. 

 

"Yeah, that's definitely it." Yurio rolled his eyes, but Yuuri was already on the bench, pulling his skates off. He didn't bother to change, shoving them into his bag as soon as he'd wiped the ice shavings off the blades. 

 

"See you tomorrow," Yuuri called, heading for the door. 

 

"Whatever," Yurio yelled at his back.

  
  


Viktor lived only a few blocks from the ice rink where they practiced, and Yuuri tried not to think about the nest situation as he walked. It was going to be awful, he knew it. A heat without a proper nest would be miserable, even with Viktor there. He'd feel unsafe and panicky the entire time, his hormones screaming at him that he was in danger, that his alpha would definitely leave, and that strangers were not safely shut out no matter how many times Viktor reassured him the doors were locked and the bed was a perfectly good enough nest for him.

 

The walk passed in a blur, and Yuuri found himself at the gate of the apartment complex. It was a high rise, with elegant wrought iron gates enclosing a sculpted front garden. In the winter most of the flower beds were bare, but as Yuuri walked past them, a few crocuses, encouraged by the fertile pheromones he was emitting as an omega in pre-heat, popped into bloom. Something twisted in Yuuri's heart, knowing that the tiny purple flowers, which had been born in the wrong season because of him, would be dead within the week from frostbite.

 

Yuuri fished his key from his pocket and unlocked the door to the building, shutting it firmly after him, even though he knew that later he would worry that he'd left it unlocked, that monstrous alphas were going to march into the apartment by the dozens and murder Viktor in order to get at him. The precarious hormonal state that heats put him in interacted with his anxiety in the worst possible way, magnifying his fears entirely out of proportion. That was another thing Yuuri disliked about heats: the embarrassment afterwards, when his mind helpfully replayed every panicked moment for him on and endless loop of shame. 

 

Pre-heat was hardly any better: the closer he got to the start of his heat, the more he felt clingy and desperate. He had a hard time keeping a coherent thought together, interspersed with increasingly short periods of lucidity that were just long enough for him to be horribly embarrassed about everything he'd said while he was fuzzy-brained and clingy, then one final brief window of clear-mindedness before his heat began in earnest. Yuuri privately suspected that the process had been somehow designed to be as humiliating as possible. 

 

Viktor claimed not to mind any of it. Viktor claimed it was all adorable, that he loved Yuuri when he was begging and needy just as much as he loved Yuuri when he was his usual self, and most of the time Yuuri believed him, but when he was in pre-heat, that weird, semi-lucid but increasingly desperate state, he found it harder to believe. 

 

Pre-heat and then heat itself weren't the Eros that Viktor claimed he had seduced him with. It wasn't cute or sexy or alluring, in Yuuri’s opinion. It was his body being driven by its most unsophisticated instincts, trying to fulfill an ancient biological imperative that was completely out of context in the modern world. It was ridiculous, Yuuri felt, for his body to go into heat at all, considering that he was on the strongest form of birth control allowed by the ISF. The sledgehammer dose of hormones was just shy of what they considered illegal doping, and Yuuri wished whatever part of his endocrine system was responsible for the lunacy of heats would recognize how unnecessary the whole thing was and put a stop to the entire pointless endeavor.

 

Yuuri turned around and looked at the gate, verifying that it was shut and latched, before taking the elevator up to the eighth floor. Viktor's apartment was in the corner, and had more windows than the non-corner apartments in the building. The southwest corner of the apartment held a cushioned window seat where Yuuri was fond of curling up with his phone to video chat with Phichit or call his mom.

 

The door was unlocked when Yuuri reached it. 

 

"Vitya?" He pushed it open and peered inside.

 

"Yuuri! Come in!" Viktor's voice was bright, cheery, and entirely wrong, Yuuri decided.

 

"Yurio made me quit earlier than I wanted," he grumbled, stepping over the threshold and braced a hand against the door, his back to the inside of the apartment as he shucked off his coat, backpack, and boots.

 

"Well, if you smelled at practice how you do now it's frankly a miracle he let you stay as long as he did," Viktor said, circling Yuuri in a hug from behind and burying his nose in Yuuri's hair. "You smell divine. Which is not really safe for the rink, or for being in public in general."

 

"Well, I feel awful," Yuuri said, twisting around so that he could rest his head on Viktor's shoulder, and getting a glimpse of the inside of the apartment for the first time. 

 

Yuuri gasped. "Vitya, what is this?"

 

"It's my nest!" Viktor said proudly, releasing Yuuri from the hug, but keeping one arm wrapped around Yuuri's waist. "I know it's usually supposed to be the omega that builds the nest, but you haven't been living here very long, so I thought I would build one for us this time. To make you feel like it was more your home too."

 

Yuuri felt his eyes prickle as he took everything in.  "Vitya, this is..." 

 

The center of the room was carpeted with quilts, all of which Yuuri recognized from the carved chest in the bedroom. Viktor had dragged the kitchen chairs into the living room, and draped a king-size comforter over the backs of the kitchen chairs and the window seat and over an armchair, creating a massive blanket fort that took up most of the room. The entry was propped open with a stack of pillows on either side, and Yuuri could see what looked like the corner of a Japanese futon mattress peeking out of the fort. Next to the entrance was a basket full of bottled energy drinks, fruit, and protein bars. Something cracked inside of Yuuri's chest, and he choked back a sob.

 

"Is it too much? I can get rid of some of it," Viktor said, the need for approval plain in his voice. "I want it to be perfect."

 

"Please Vitya, will you let me into your nest?" Yuuri asked, borrowing the phrase traditionally said by alphas. It was the only thing he could think of to show Viktor how much he appreciated the nest Viktor had built.

 

"Yuuri,  _ yes _ ," Viktor breathed. "Please share my nest," he added, using the phrase that omegas traditionally answered with. 

 

Yuuri followed Viktor to the entrance to the fort, where they both knelt to crawl inside.

 

The light was softer under the blanket canopy, and Yuuri let himself fall backwards onto the futon. 

 

"Vitya, it's perfect," he sighed, his voice cracking on the words. "I didn't...I didn't think I would be able to make one, every time it never feels right, but you...this..." he trailed off and muttered something indistinct. 

 

Viktor flopped down onto the futon beside Yuuri and reached for a blanket from a pile near the entrance. 

 

"I sort of thought so," Viktor said, pulling Yuuri's socks off one at a time, then tucking the blanket around the two of them and rolling over to face Yuuri. "You seemed more antsy this time, and I wondered if the nest thing was part of it."

 

"It was most of it," Yuuri said, curling into Viktor's arms.

 

"Well, I turned down the thermostat so we shouldn't get too warm in here, and if you want, we can pretty much live here for the next three days, except for bathroom breaks. I don't know if you saw, but I stashed a ton of food just outside, and if you don't mind me leaving for a few minutes, I've got a bag of katsudon pirozhkis in the fridge from Yura," Viktor said.

 

"From Yurio?" Yuuri was going to cry, he knew it. "When did he do that?"

 

"Last night, after you were in bed. He texted me so he didn't have to ring the bell and wake you up. He told me not to tell you, actually," Viktor said, amusement in his voice, "but I don't know where he would have thought you'd get katsudon pirozhkis other than from him."

 

"He kept telling me to go home today," Yuuri said, sniffing at Viktor's neck. 

 

"He was trying to take care of you too, in his unique, grumpy way." Viktor let his head fall to the side, giving Yuuri open access to his neck.

 

"Hm. You smell good, Vitya," Yuuri said. "I don't want to talk about Yurio."

 

"No, definitely not. Let's talk about what we're going to do for the next couple days instead," Viktor decided.

 

"I thought I had a few more days before it started," Yuuri grumbled, twisting his fingers into Viktor's hair. 

 

"You definitely do not," Viktor said, breathing in the sweet, floral scent saturating the air. "I'd guess you have hours at the most."

 

"But it's okay?" Yuuri's voice came out raw, desperate.

 

"Of course it's okay," Vitkor replied, tightening his arms around Yuuri. "I made this blanket fort for us because its okay."

 

"You made it for us," Yuuri echoed with disbelief. "I'm an okay omega? I'm okay for you?"

 

"You're better than okay, you're perfect," Viktor answered. "And if you're already asking me things like that it means we don't have too much time, so come on, let's go get you showered. You're still wearing your practice clothes."

 

"Won't go alone," Yuuri protested, his words starting to slur. "Need you."

 

"I'll stay close to you," Viktor promised. He sat up and grabbed Yuuri's free hand, lacing their fingers together tightly, then lead him out of the blanket fort to the bathroom.

 

Yuuri grumbled at him and asked him every few seconds if he was good, if he was okay, and if Viktor was going to stay with him. Every time, Viktor squeezed his hand and said "of course, solnyshko."

 

Yuuri stumbled into the shower, turning the water on and getting soaked before he realized he was still in his clothes, still gripping both of Viktor's hands like a drowning man, still wearing his glasses. 

 

He dropped one of Viktor's hands so he could remove his glasses, and the loss of contact made his eyes prickle with tears. 

 

"Vitya--don't leave," he gasped, annoyed with himself for being upset and desperate and unreasonable. Yuuri  _ knew _ Viktor wasn't going anywhere, knew he had to let go of his hands if it wanted to take a proper shower and not just stand there like an idiot under the water with his clothes on, but knowing didn't make it any easier to do.

 

"What if I help you with those, solnyshko?" Viktor asked, and dropped Yuuri's other hand, but before Yuuri could react he had taken the glasses, set them aside somewhere, and placed both hands firmly on Yuuri's hips. "I've got you, let's just get through this shower together, hm? And then we can go back in the blanket fort like we both want."

 

"Yes," Yuuri agreed, trying to focus on the important words: blanket fort.  _ Blanket fort _ , he reminded himself as Viktor took his hands away to remove his pants and shirt.  _ Blanket fort _ , he reminded himself, as Viktor shuffled Yuuri closer to the spray to shampoo his hair and wash the rest of him.  _ Blanket fort _ , he reminded himself, as Viktor guided him out of the shower, wrapped him in an oversized towel, and lead him, one hand around his waist and the other reaching across to hold Yuuri's far hand, back to the living room. 

 

"You keep saying that," Viktor said, and the fog cleared in Yuuri's brain enough for him to be embarrassed. 

 

"Sorry," he muttered. "I think you were right, earlier. I don't have any time at all."

 

"That's okay," Viktor promised. "We've got the blanket fort and food and Makka is with Yurio."

 

"I can't believe I didn't notice Makkachin wasn't here when I got home," Yuuri said. "I really am out of it. Vitya. Let's get back the blanket fort."

 

"Of course, solnyshko," Viktor replied, kissing him on the cheek. He crawled into the blanket fort and pulled Yuuri in after him, laughing as Yuuri crashed into him on the futon.

 

"Mm. You made this for me. Safe. This is good," Yuuri mumbled, yawning. "I'm just gonna close my eyes for one minute."

 

"I'll be right here when you wake up," Viktor promised. 

  
  


It was dark out when Yuuri woke up, and something heavy was lying across his back. He rubbed his eyes, and there was Viktor--one arm slung protectively across Yuuri’s back, holding him close to Viktor’s chest. Yuuri gently removed the arm and sat up, looking up at the ceiling of the blanket fort for the first time as he did so. Viktor had stuck tiny glow-in-the-dark stars all over the blanket that formed their ceiling, creating little constellations that glowed softly in the darkness of the blanket fort. 

 

Yuuri felt his eyes prickle, felt his heart overwhelmed with fondness, safety, and love. 

 

“Vitya,” he said softly, touching Viktor’s shoulder. “Vitya, wake up.”

 

“What? Oh, Yuuri. Have a good nap?” Viktor asked, opening his eyes and smiling up at Yuuri.

 

“The best nap,” Yuuri said, snuggling back into the circle of Viktor’s arms. “Thank you for all this. It’s...it’s better than I could have done. Better than I imagined. I’m not worried about this heat anymore. This blanket fort feels safe. Thank you, Vitya.”

 

“My Yuuri loves our blanket fort,” Viktor sighed. “I’m so glad.”

 

“And I love you,” Yuuri said, pressing a kiss to Viktor’s cheek. “Can you help me with something?”

 

“Oh, what could you possibly want my help with?” Viktor asked, running a hand down Yuuri’s back to his thigh. 

  
“You know what,” Yuuri replied. 

 

“Of course I’ll help you,” Viktor said.

 

\--

 

Four days later, Yuuri and Viktor emerged from their blanket fort for a much-needed bath. 

 

“I’m afraid my hair is never going to recover,” Viktor lamented, touching his stiff, sticky hair gingerly. 

 

“Sorry again for that,” Yuuri offered. “I would normally be embarrassed about that but I don’t think it’s possible to feel embarrassment while this tired and dehydrated.”

 

“I’m glad you’re not,” Viktor said. “I don’t mind.” 

 

“Until part of your hair breaks off,” Yuuri teased.

 

“Even then,” Viktor insisted, turning the taps on. “Rose or lavender bubble bath?”

 

“Rose,” Yuuri said. 

 

“Ah, that’s nice,” Viktor sighed, slipping into the glittery, rose-scented pink water. “Come in with me?”

 

“Of course,” Yuuri said. He climbed into the tub and leaned back against Viktor’s chest.

 

“Thank you, Vitya,” Yuuri said quietly, poking idly at blobs of bubbles as they floated by. 

 

“For what?” Viktor asked. “I didn’t do anything special.”

 

“You made everything about this heat perfect,” Yuuri said. “You took such good care of me. You kept me safe in your blanket fort. Usually afterwards everything feels so wrong and annoying, but I don’t feel that at all this time. I just feel loved.”

 

“I’m glad,” Viktor said, dropping a kiss on the top of Yuuri’s head. 

 

“Vitya?” Yuuri asked a few minutes later. “Can we build a blanket fort every time?”

 

“Of course, solnyshko.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Drop me a comment if you liked it!


End file.
